NEW YORK (AP) — It was considered a symbolic move — President Lyndon Johnson going to the Statue of Liberty and signing an immigration bill that gave people from every country in the world an equal chance to come to America.

The president himself described the legislation as less than revolutionary. "It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power,"

he said during the ceremony on Oct. 3, 1965.

But, he noted, the new law also would "strengthen us in a hundred unseen ways."